Dear Friends,
At one moment in my career, I had to make one of the most difficult decisions in my life: keep my job, which meant accepting a situation that violated the most elementary professional ethics, or quit. (I learned later that the people who put me in this situation were actively banking on my leaving!) So, rather than commit moral hara-kiri, I quit.
In the following weeks, I developed a deep-seated and all-consuming resentment such as I had never experienced before against the people who had put me in this impossible situation. When I awoke in the morning, my first thought was of them. As I showered, as I walked along the streets, as I went shopping or jogging, this resentment obsessed me, eating me up, draining my energy and robbing me of all peace. I was very literally being poisoned. I knew I was harming myself, but despite hours of meditation, prayer, and spiritual study, this obsession clung to me. I felt and behaved like a total victim!
Then one day, a statement in the Sermon on the Mount struck me as never before: ‘Bless those that curse you’ (Matthew 5:44). Suddenly, everything became clear. This is what I had to do. Bless my former ‘persecutors’. Right then and there, I started to bless them in every way imaginable: in their health and their joy, their finances and their work, their family relations and their peace, their abundance and their goodness. The ways to bless them were endless. By blessing, I mean wishing from the bottom of the heart, in total sincerity, the very best for that person – his or her complete fulfilment and deepest happiness. It is the most important dimension of blessing: a sincerity that comes from the heart. This is the power that transforms and heals, elevates and restores. It is the very antipode of a stereotyped ritual. Spontaneous blessing is a flowing fountain that, like a mountain stream, cascades and sings.
I want to stress that, at first, these blessings were a conscious decision activated by the will but born of a sincere spiritual intention to heal my thinking. The key factor was the intention. Slowly, the blessings moved from being an act of the will to an act of the heart – because the act of blessing comes essentially from the heart.
I blessed the persons concerned all day long: when brushing my teeth, jogging, on my way to the post office or supermarket, while washing dishes and before falling asleep. I blessed them individually and silently. This continued for quite a few years.
After a few months of this practice of blessing, one day, quite spontaneously, I started blessing people in the street, on the bus, at the post office, or when I stood in queues. At the beginning of this wonderful discovery, I would sometimes walk the whole length of a plane or train just for the joy of silently blessing the travellers – unreservedly and unconditionally. This ‘gentle art of blessing’ became a silent song, the driving power of my spiritual life, a bit like the cantus firmus of a Bach cantata. The stronger the basic melody, the more the counterpoint can develop and expand. Little by little, blessing people became one of the greatest joys of my life – and it still is now, after many years of practice. I have found it to be one of the most efficient ways of staying spiritually centred and of freeing my thoughts from negativity, criticism, or judgment.
I never received any roses from my former employer, nor even the slightest expression of regret. Rather, I have received roses from life. By the armful.
A constant reminder of spiritual masters is that one cannot grow spiritually as long as one is burdened mentally by the habit of judging others. So the minute anyone expresses the least aggression or unkindness to you, why not respond with a blessing? Bless them totally, sincerely, joyfully – for such blessings are a shield that protects them from the ignorance of their misdeed and deflects the arrow that was aimed at you. Do not take my word for this! Try it for yourself. Try to systematically replace every single thought of judgement with blessing – especially for that fellow at the office who drives you out of your wits! Try blessing. You will be the first to benefit from it.
With heartfelt blessings,
Pierre Pradervand
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